Genre’s Not Dead

Love and hate are as intimately intertwined as Rhian and Aljur here.

My Kontrabida Girl
Director: Jade Castro
Cast: Rhian Ramos, Aljur Abrenica, Bea Binene, Jake Vargas, Bella Flores, Enzo Pineda, Chariz Solomon, Kevin Santos, Sef Cadayona, Ken Chan, Bela Padilla, Gwen Zamora
2012 

Do not be fooled by its deceptively accessible surface, enhanced by the parade of delicious biceps thanks to Aljur Abrenica, Enzo Pineda et. al. You may think you’re just watching another run-of-the-mill boy-meets-girl story (well, to some extent that’s what it is) but who would’ve thought that GMA Films would come up with a romantic comedy that’s not plain fluff? 

The New Conservative

The gospel of Star Cinema: people start to openly want sex only because they're brokenhearted.

Unofficially Yours
Director: Cathy Garcia Molina
Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Angel Locsin, Boom Labrusca, Edgar Allan Guzman, Tetchie Agbayani, K Brosas
2012

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Unofficially Yours. Because I did. An enjoyment, however, that went nothing beyond the purely escapist pleasure of being in a darkened cinema by yourself for two hours, away from nagging office deadlines, obscenely increasing gas and power rates and other daily burdens that, unfortunately, are officially ours.

The film seemed promising, topbilled by two of the best actors of their generation and directed by Star Cinema’s resident auteur. Many were raving. The moviehouse I saw it in was still pretty packed. And yet, in spite of all that it had going for it, I found the film ultimately unremarkable.

The Piolitical Landscape

In the midst of globalization, can love be this picture-perfect?

Love Me Again (Land Down Under)
Director: Rory B. Quintos
Cast: Piolo Pascual, Angel Locsin
2008

One cannot write about Rory Quintos’ Love Me Again (Land Down Under) without reviewing Piolo’s abs. Those yummy hunks of toasted brown pandesal—sarap gawing agahan—are practically the film’s centerpiece. Forgive the bias, I may exaggerate a bit, but seriously, Piolo’s abs are like the film’s visual motif or something. If you’re not seeing the actual six-pack onscreen, you see it in the form of Bukidnon’s rolling mountain ranges or Australia’s dry but sensuous dunes, the rippling backdrop to the lovers’ narrative.

This isn’t just cheap body worship doing the talking. It could be, partly, but all things considered, Love Me Again is essentially about fetishism anyway. We might as well be blunt about it.

Mum’s the Word

One artificial couple after another.

In My Life
Director: Olivia Lamasan
Cast: Vilma Santos, Luis Manzano, John Lloyd Cruz
2009

Shirley walks over to a group of four white sculptures. Her son Mark sheepishly stands beside her. “Father and son, mother and daughter,” she says, pointing to the two pairs of figures. She gestures at her and Mark, the third pair: “Mother and son.” Shirley smiles triumphantly at her seemingly clever parallelisms. “Family! Kaya nga gusto ko dito.” Mark’s lover Noel laughs and takes the photo.

The scene is short, almost forgettable, buried somewhere in a touristic sequence where Mark (Luis Manzano), with his boyfriend Noel (John Lloyd Cruz), shows his mother Shirley (Vilma Santos) around New York City. The white sculptures are George Segal’s Gay Liberation, a site-specific installation in Greenwich Village built in 1980 to commemorate the Stonewall riots which catalyzed the gay rights movement in the US. Shirley, however, is unaware of the monument’s nature, recognizing it only as innocent males and females in a “family.”

A Subjective Unfairness

A day in the "unfair" life of Lara. Hmph.

And I Love You So
Director: Laurenti Dyogi
Cast: Bea Alonzo, Sam Milby, Derek Ramsay
2009

Laurenti Dyogi’s And I Love You So begins with a premise straight out of the 2007 Hollywood hit P.S. I Love You. The peg—and I believe most Star Cinema films begin with pegs—is so shamelessly similar/unchanged that one wonders whether it should be called an adaptation. It is the story of Lara (Bea Alonzo), a pre-school teacher happily married to her perfect, hunky husband Oliver (Derek Ramsay). But not for long. With the first twenty minutes or so straight out of P.S. I Love You, the film establishes that Lara and Oliver are the perfect couple, blissfully married, want kids but are procrastinating, and tragically don’t get to do so because Oliver is struck down by—Hi, Gerard Butler!—a brain illness. And like Hilary Swank, Lara is devastated.

The story sort of deviates from P.S. I Love You when Lara meets Chris (Sam Milby), a guy who, like Lara, is struggling to move on with his life after a heartbreaking romantic breakdown.